10/26/18

I do not want to write this column, but I must. I can remain
silent no longer. There is a name for a government that:

·Concentrates power in a supposedly infallible
leader

·Surrounds that leader with a cadre of fanatical
loyalists

·Worships militarism

·Manufactures external and internal enemies

·Uses violence and the threat of violence to rule

·Strives to become a monolithic one-party state

·Seeks to eliminate all critics and opposition

·Co-opts social institutions such as business,
churches, and the media

·Uses fear to manipulate the masses

It is called fascism
and the United States of America is tottering on the edge of a fascist
precipice. Der Fuhrer Trump and the fascist Republican Party are pushing from the
front and the only the thing preventing the fall is spirited but shrinking
rearguard opposition.

Surely not in the United States, you protest, the U.S.
defeated fascism in World War II. No, it defeated German, Italian, and Japanese
fascism, but its American variant thrives.Trump is the culmination of plans hatched in the Progressive
Era to oppose business regulation, immigration, and the electoral success of democratic
socialism. Socialists were demonized and the Big Lie caught on: that the Soviet
Union was a "socialist" state. Later we were told that Nazis
were "socialists." In each case, American fascists used a multi-faceted term, distilled it
to a single meaning, and called it "reality." It was the same slight
of hand that today allows any fascist who wears an American flag pin to call
himself a "loyal American." But hiding in plain sight is what
fascists do well.You never hear that no
one was more opposed to communism and fascism than democratic socialists.

American fascists gathered force during the Depression.
Roosevelt's New Deal both stymied them and instilled a sense of urgency. They
were the America First crowd, the German Bund, Father Coughlin followers, the
second Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow politicians, Silver Shirts, devotees of Gerald
Winrod, and the few with the guts to admit they belonged to the American Nazi
Party. Who knows how American fascism would have fared had not the Japanese
ruined everything by bombing Pearl Harbor.

After World War II American fascists helped smuggle Nazis
out of Germany, stoked the Red Scare, beat the drums of the Cold War, built the
CIA, trumpeted McCarthyism, made Atlas
Shrugged the new gospel, joined the John Birch Society and the Heritage
Foundation, became Dixiecrats, and fashioned the National Rifle Association
into one of the nation's largest lobby groups. Later these forces masterminded
COINTELPRO, finagled bloated military budgets to dismantle social program
through budget attrition, militarized cops, unleashed the NRA, took over
evangelical Protestantism, smashed labor unions, marginalized great swaths of
the populace, and built a fear-based corpocracy in which power pools at the top
like fetid sewage. Their followers include skinheads, survivalists, the Klan, Aryan Nation racists, Christian identity members, unreconstructed neo-Confederates, cultural biogts, rogue investors, Wall Street predators, the
American Family Association, Citizens United, Freedom Watch and hundreds of
other groups that hide their intent behind neutral-sounding monikers. Rich
fascists such as the Koch brothers fund them and the Republican Party has
become their public vehicle.

Perhaps you protest that you've always been a Republican,
and these people are not you. But they are. You can no longer pretend
you support the Republican agenda of the 1950s or 1980s. You are like the
villagers near Auschwitz who claimed they had no idea there were extermination
camps. They knew. You know. Pipe bombs have been mailed: to the Clintons, Barack
Obama, Joe Biden, former CIA Director John Brennan, investor George Soros,
Representative Maxine Walters, and Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
More bombs are being discovered as you read. No one has been harmed—yet. But
you know who is really responsible.

We also know how this will end. We've seen it before.
Eventually someone will be arrested and Republicans—through their official propaganda organ, Fox News—will tell us that he (and it's almost always
a he) was a "lone wolf." A back-story will emerge, probably some
combination of job loss, a workplace dispute, trouble in high school,
mental health issues, a broken marriage, and a record of previous encounters
with the law. If fascists hit the jackpot, he will have had a bad experience
with an immigrant. They will tell us that he is "unbalanced," but
there was no way to predict that he would attempt such a "heinous crime."
They will pat themselves on the back for catching this "deranged
criminal" before he did any serious damage.

It is the same story we heard after every school shooting.
We also heard it after gunmen murdered 59 in Las Vegas, 50 in Orlando, and 27
in a Texas church. We heard it when James Alex Fields plowed his car into a
crowd in Charlottesville, Virginia. It is a lie. Do you remember how President
Trump said there were "bad actors on both sides" after
Charlottesville? This time he said, "We want both sides to come together
in peace and harmony." That lasted all of 24-hours before he reverted to
the fascist practice of blaming the crisis on a convenient enemy: the media. The culprit will not be
a lone wolf. He will be from a rabid pack that contains Gregory Bush, Nickolas
Cruz, Omar Mateen, Dylann Roof, George Zimmerman, and dozens of racist cops who
murdered black men "in the line of duty." Surely, you will say,
leftists have done such things. Yes, three percent of the time; in 71 percent
of mass violent crime cases a right-wing extremist is the culprit. I'll lay odds the pipe bomber
is not a journalist or leftist.

Fascists always try to change the tune. They rally outside
the Clinton compound to scream, "Lock her up." They take to the
airwaves, keyboards, and streets to proclaim they are battling to "make
America great again." They repeat and re-Tweet Der Fuhrer's every
utterance. They scream, "fake news!" when they are evidence-challenged.
They claim everything except their real agenda: to preserve with their last
breath and bullet a white male-dominated America. They know that history is
against them; America is already a multicultural society and is on the cusp of becoming
a minority majority nation. The only way to derail this is through violence. And
fear.

If you thought Nixon's enemy list was distressing, check Trump's
target list: Muslims, fraudulent voters, illegal immigrants, liberals, socialists,
gays, the transgendered, protesting sports figures, scientists, intellectual
"elites," hysterical women, Democrats, journalists…. Trumpinistas
change enemies at the drop of a hat. Latinos marching toward the US border in
hope of crossing are mostly Hondurans fleeing brutal right-wing repression.
Trump told us that there were "Middle Eastern" terrorists in their
ranks. That was so patently absurd—not to mention racist—that he decided they
were Venezuelans instead, though how they got across the Panama Canal and
walked more than 2,700 miles is left unexplained.

Time is running out. The Democratic Party looks a lot like
Germany's Social Democratic Party before Hitler emasculated it. The SDP was
once a party of the left, but moved to the center, then to the oxymoronic
"center-right," and was easily toppled. America's center-right
Democratic Party applauds the silencing of its left (or blames it for its own
ineptitude). Can it awaken from self-induced torpor and embrace the siren call
sounded by the left? We better hope so. American politics is no longer
conservatives against liberals. It is fascism versus democracy, and fascism is
winning. It is time to push back as if the future depends on it. It does.

Òrach is
the Gaelic word for golden and, believe it or not, The Tannahill Weavers have
been touring continuously for 50 years. To put that in perspective, only folks
such as Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, and The
Chieftains have sojourned longer without a break or two. To commemorate this
milestone, The Tannies have invited some alums and friends to assist this them
on Òrach, their 18th
recording. A lot of those guests—Kenny Forsyth, Iain MacInnes, Colin Melville,
Duncan Nicholson, and Hudson Swan—are bagpipers, though current piper Lorne
MacDougall is certainly a worthy peer.

Roy Gullane (vocals, guitar)
and Phil Smillie (vocals, flute, whistles, percussion) are the Ur-core of the
Tannies, and fiddler John Martin has been with them since Ossian disbanded in
1989. No matter the personnel, The Tannies have long been masters of the
legendary Big Set—usually a march, strathspey, and reel combination—hence it is
appropriate that they kick off with the title track, which is in that vein. The
formula always works; let instruments drift in (keys, whistle, guitar, and
fiddle), then add the pipes, pick up the pace, and then open the throttle. I
will never forget seeing the band in one of their first American tours in the
1970s, when they let loose and the pipes peeled the paint from the walls. It
was one of the most exciting things I’ve ever heard though, objectively, back
then the execution was sometimes more loud than precise.

The discovery of grace took
the Tannies to the next level. On songs such as “Jessie the Floo’er of Dunblane”
and “Battle of Sheriffmuir” we can hear some wear and tear on the voices, but
it remains the case that few Celtic ensembles have mastered three-part
harmonies as well as Gullane, Smillie, and Martin. (The band's namesake, the
18th century poet Robert Tannahill wrote the first song, and the second comes
from some guy named Robert Burns!) You will hear harmonies in their glory on “Jennie
A’ Things” and “The Jeannie C.” If the latter title sounds familiar, it’s a
classic Stan Rogers sea song. All you need to know to determine its arc is its
repeating line: I’ll go to sea no more.
The most surprisingly song is “Oh No!” Alison Brown guests on banjo and it
sounds as if The Tannies have taken up bluegrass, though the piece was actually
penned by actor/comedian Billy Connolly. As the Scots and Irish say, it’s great
craic (fun, merriment).

I enjoyed each track on this
anniversary album immensely, though four really knocked me kilt over tam. “The Asturian Sessions” takes the Tannies to the Celtic region of northwest Spain, where
the band collaborates with members of Llan de Cubel. It’s an unusual piece made
all the more so by added didgeridoo from ex-Tannie Dougie MacLean. This rousing
set buzzes to the pace of the Scottish small pipes.

Two pieces memorialize World
War I. “Sunset Over the Somme” is a sweeping instrumental with vaporous vocals subsumed
in an anthemic mix. “The Ghost of Mick McDonnell” takes us a step deeper into
the mindless tragedy of war, with its beyond-the-grave account from a young
Irishman who perished in the conflict. It’s a haunting piece, adorned with just
a splash of sanguinary Highland pipes.

That instrument is aired out
in the “Gordon Duncan Set,” written in honor of one of Scotland’s most
respected masters and teachers of the pipes. Alas, Duncan struggled with
alcoholism and died in 2005, either from ill health or suicide, depending on whose
version you believe. This piece would have made him smile. It has a joyful
opening, with the small pipes chirping away, but its gathering pace combo explodes
into another Big Set, this one driven by the Highland pipes. The tune evolve
into a dance-until-you-drop groove. The Tannies have been making us do that for
a half century and the constant infusion of younger talent like Lorne
MacDougall—who has also shown up with the Red Hot Chili Peppers—gives hope that
50 years hence there will be a centenary Tannahill Weavers’ album.

Rob Weir

If you want to snippets of Tannahill
Weavers’ road stories, see the band’s Website, where they’ve excerpted a piece
I once wrote for Sing Out! Magazine.

And here's a link that captures The Tannahill Weavers live. If this isn't rowdy enough for you, seek help!

10/24/18

Few people recognize that the National Portrait Gallery,
housed in the Old Patent Building, is actually a dual museum; the same facility
also is also the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. If official portraits
aren’t to your liking, there’s plenty more to entertain and amaze.

Richard Avedon

First, though, can we just get past the whole lives of the
rich and famous thing?Adjacent to
the Hall of Presidents is a large gallery devoted to workers, common folks, and
those down on their luck. You will find iconic images from Lewis Hine, Winslow
Homer, Dorothea Lange, and others, but also things you probably haven’t seen in
textbooks. There is, for instance, a series of photos and paintings of newsies,
the kids who used to hawk papers on the streets and have done so since Colonial
times. A few of then images that really grabbed me included a heartbreaking
image of a turn-of-the-twentieth-century orphan girl. On the triumphant end of
the scale, how about a real-life Rosie the Riveter in vivid Kodachrome? I also
admired the subtle curation of this gallery. Norman Rockwell’s well-known image
of a coal miner tells us one kind of story, but it’s not the same narrative as
an enormous portrait rendered by Richard Avedon.

The facility is also a real superb repository of American
folk art—much of which is stored behind glass in accessible archives. This is
the museum equivalent of a library’s open stacks, and it’s something most
museums don’t do. Usually curators choose a small sampling of a museum’s
collection; the bulk is in storage. There’s a roving-about-an-attic quality to
open archives that turns the viewing experience into a treasure hunt. I could
have spent hours there. Alas, I had to rendezvous with my traveling companions
in less than one, so here are just a few discoveries.

There are paintings of all sorts in the galleries, many of
which have been reproduced for books, posters, and websites. These names are
also familiar: Benton, Cassatt, Catlin, Durand, Hassam, Hopper, O'Keeffe,
Lawrence, Naguchi…

The Old Patent Building lends itself well to smaller special
exhibits. Let me just highlight two, the first devoted to the photos of Diane
Arbus (1923-71), arguably the most celebrated female shutterbug of the
post-World War Two years. She had an eye for sharp focus, but also for anything
unusual and bizarre. Some detractors called her work carnivalesque and accused
her of freak show sensationalism. In retrospect, she was on to something. Forget
the land of the free and the home of the brave, the United States has long been
a nation of wide margins. Arbus
spent most of her life in New York City—that sprawling polyglot American dynamo
where rules have exceptions and even the exceptions are meant to be broken.
Were her images manipulative? During her lifetime many thought so. Today, some
think she was prescient in making the marginalized visible. So did her image of
a woman holding a monkey dressed in baby clothes stretch the definition of the
mainstream? Should we applaud the “Yeah, so what?” insouciance of a
transvestite in the process of a makeover? Do we marvel over a Jewish giant, or
feel sorry for him? Is Arbus’ work transgressive or transformational? Frankly,
I’m not sure how to answer those questions. I can say, though, that she was
never boring and that you know a Diane Arbus photograph when you see one. And
no one ever accused her of catering to popular demand.

It’s been (gulp!) 50 years since 1968, a pivotal year in
American history: The Tet Offensive, the deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr. and
Bobby Kennedy, urban riots, the Chicago Democratic convention, Nixon’s election….
Conservatives like to label it the year America took a wrong turn but of
course, it’s not that simple. The year before, the so-called Summer of Love,
was just as filled with myth, merriment, and mischief as the one that
followed—as is every year of every era. This summer the National Portrait
Gallery had a small show on 1968 that at first underwhelmed me. It’s small, I
had seen most of what was in it in various contexts, and it was almost entirely
visual with only the slightest nod given to context or analysis. Then I
recalled what Todd Gitlin said about how the Sixties are recalled as
fragmented, disconnected events and images that are reduced to stand-ins for an
entire era. He’s right. The Sixties have become the image equivalent of a play
list set on shuffle. What did it mean? It depends on who loads the images and
why they chose one set over another. All that’s clear is that the Sixties
mattered.

The NPG show focuses mostly on snap shots of the
counterculture: a day-glo Jimi Hendrix poster, a collage of the Grateful Dead,
an anti-Vietnam poster, a side-by-side of the Dead and Big Brother and the
Holding Company that will make Baby Boomers yearn for their youth…. Two pieces
stand out as poignant harbingers—Roy Lichtenstein’s pop art down-the-barrel POV
of a gun we have come to worship, and the Black Power protest salute of John
Carlos and Tommy Smith at the Mexico City Olympics. It is easy/facile for
conservatives to blame the Sixties for all manner of perceived woes, but it
really boils down to this. American stood at a crossroads in 1968. One path pointed
toward the Age of Aquarius, the other to five more years of Vietnam, repressed
civil liberties in the name of law and order, and a rollback of the Great
Society. We have no idea what the Age of Aquarius would have yielded—perhaps a
nightmare of a different order. But we know what the second path brought: Sandy
Hook and associated mass slaughters, the return of the Gilded Age, and the need
for Black Lives Matter. The more I thought of the NPG kaleidoscope look at
1968, the more nostalgic and sadder it made me.

10/22/18

Most art lovers who find
themselves in Washington, DC seldom venture very far. That’s understandable,
given that you can take in five major art museums without straying from the
National Mall. But if you wander four blocks up 8th Street from the
National Gallery of Art, you’ll come to an underappreciated gem: the National Portrait Gallery (NPG). Don’t
be put off by the name; there’s a whole lot more there than stiff formal
portraits. I’d even go so far as to suggest that it's one of the best places in
the city to get (ahem!) a good picture of America.

In Part Two I’ll discuss
some of the more unusual things you’ll find at the NPG, but first let’s consider
lessons embedded within the namesake images of well-known people, beginning
with those who have served as President of the United States. Many of these provide
insight into the character of the individual represented and the times in which
they served. I will skip most of the early portraits, as images of Washington,
Jefferson, Jackson, and other such figures are precisely the ones you’ve seen
in textbooks since the time you were in primary school. I was, however, quite
taken with a Lincoln portrait
painted by George Peter Alexander Healy. It shows Lincoln chin on hand, as if
he were pondering the nation’s future. That’s exactly what he was doing. Remember that seven Southern states had
left the Union before Lincoln even
took office. No president other than Franklin
Roosevelt ever faced such perilous burdens or had a shorter honeymoon
transition period.

Lincoln conveys
thoughtfulness; FDR opted for confidence. FDR gazes at us with sphinx-like
steeliness, a strong leader to guide Americans through the Great Depression. If
the splotch of red behind him seems hagiographic, you have but to read accounts
from the legions of ordinary Americans who saw Roosevelt as a secular savior. Artist
Douglas Chandor used FDR's trademark cigarette holder to contrast his imperial
cape and suggest folksiness that resonated with the era’s appeal to ordinary
Americans.

Official portraits are often
an assemblage of impression, pageantry, stagecraft, and ego. Sometimes they
offer unintended psychological insights, or eerily foreshadow fate. Elaine de
Kooning painted John F. Kennedy in loose
brushstrokes and splotches that give an impression of JFK, not a spitting
image. She painted Kennedy in 1963, and it’s hard not to think of Dallas when
one sees the tattered texture about Kennedy’s head. The intended message was
that JFK heralded a new era and a new spirit. That was the case, but not in the
ways anticipated, and de Kooning's (deliberately) indistinct brushstrokes now
evoke a torn body and faded hope.

If you wonder if Richard Nixon had a soft spot, the
answer is maybe. Norman Rockwell’s image suggests there is one. It’s a
surprisingly tender look at a guy almost no one associates with such a quality.
Like FDR, Ronald Reagan wanted to
invoke the common man. Aaron Shickler’s portrait is very Rockwell-like and
shows Reagan in a blue work shirt, as if ready to dispense backwoods wisdom.
Anyone familiar with Reagan nostrums knows that’s exactly what he often did.

On the other hand, the terms
ego and Bill Clinton interlock like
the bubbles of a Chuck Close painting, which is precisely who painted him. The
portrait is huge and you can draw your own conclusions from that. I also found
it unflattering in cartoonish ways suggestive of clownishness. Is that also
telling?

The star of the hall right
now is Barack Obama, painted in the
style of an African chief by Kehinde Wiley. It’s simultaneously formal and
relaxed. You can snap a shot of it from the side, but if you want to stand
directly in front for a selfie, be prepared to queue for about 45 minutes. I
heard no grumbling, though I did see tears, smiles, and genuine outpourings of
respect. The Obama portrait is unique, even if it’s not your cup of tea. I
can’t imagine we shall see such enthusiasm when #45 is hung on the wall.

To round off Part One, a few
comments are in order on the differences between men and women in high places. There
is a quiet dignity to the robed figures that make up the entire pantheon of
female Supreme Court Justices. These
individuals radiate competence and seriousness—more as if they just want to get
on with their jobs rather than casting lines upon the waters of reputation.Eleanor
Roosevelt’s portrait looks a bit like that as well. She has a Mona
Lisa-like smile, but she also looks as if she has just come in from puttering
about the gardens of her Val-Kill retreat.

You’ve probably seen the
famed painting of Marian Anderson,
but it’s even more powerful in person. She looks defiant and strong, as if to
say, “You can deny me, but you cannot break me.” If you don’t know what I mean,
educate yourself and find out how she and Eleanor Roosevelt said no to racism
and turned one of America’s ugly moments into a glorious triumph. I see
Anderson and Eleanor as bookend portraits, not to mention examples of American
history that is too often left off the table. The Hall of Presidents if
history; Eleanor and Anderson represent herstory.

Currently, one of the NPG’s
most controversial portraits is that of Michelle
Obama. Many have said that Amy Sherald’s likeness doesn’t look like Mrs.
Obama. It doesn’t, actually, but in some ways Sherald succeeded where de
Kooning and Close came up short. As we've seen, there's no rule that says an
official portrait must look like a painted photograph. The Michelle Obama
representation makes more sense if you see it as an icon inspired by African
art. Michelle has always been bolder in asserting her heritage than her
biracial husband. In this portrait, Obama is both First Lady and mindful of her
African heritage. This is Michelle on her own terms.

What's This Blog About?

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